The skin on her shoulders prickled at the thought, and she wanted to turn round and look up at him. A moment’s hesitation and she did just that. His face was grave, but he was looking at her.
“All right?” he asked in a whisper.
“Yes,” she said, comforted by his voice. “I just wondered whether you’d fallen asleep standing up.”
“Not yet.”
She smiled, and opened her mouth to say something, apologize for keeping him and his friend out all night. He stopped her with a small twitch of fingers.
“It’s all right,” he said softly. “You do what you came to do. We’ll stay with you and take you home in the morning. I meant it; I won’t leave you alone.”
She swallowed.
“I know you did,” she said, just as softly. “Thank you.”
There was an audible stir outside. The procession of shuffling soldiers had stopped. She sat up straight and felt the two men behind her shift. She caught a low murmur from William.
“This will be General Lincoln, I expect.”
John Cinnamon made an inquisitive huffing noise but said nothing, and an instant later the tent flap was pulled well back and a very fat, stocky man in full Continental uniform, complete with cocked hat, limped in, followed by a close-packed group of officers in a variety of uniforms. It had begun to rain, and a welcome breath of cool, damp air came in with them.
She slipped her sketches into the writing desk and took out a few fresh sheets, but didn’t return to her work right away; she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. This … this was history, right in front of her.
Her heart had been quiet through the evening, but now it sped up and began to thump heavily, in an unpleasant way that made her worry that it was about to run amok. She pressed a hand hard against the placket of her stays, and mentally uttered a fierce Stay! as though her heart were a large, unruly dog.
The general stopped short beside the body, coughed—everyone did, the smell was growing worse, despite the cool night—and slowly removed his hat. He turned to murmur something to the man at his shoulder—a Frenchman? She thought Lincoln was speaking French, though very awkwardly—and she caught another whiff of rain and night, and saw the droplets that he shook from his hat make spots in the shadowed dust.
Lincoln beckoned three of the men forward. French, said the objective watcher in the back of her mind, and her pencil made rapid strokes, rough indications of embroidery, epaulets, full-skirted blue coats, red waistcoats and breeches …
The three men—naval officers?—stepped forward, one in front, his lavishly gold-laced hat held solemnly to his bosom. She heard William make a low humming noise in his throat; was this Admiral d’Estaing himself?
She leaned forward a little, not sketching now but memorizing, storing away the play of firelight through the tent’s wall on the officer’s face, the pitter of rain on the canvas above. The admiral—if that’s who he was—was slender but round-faced, jowly, but with oddly childlike wide eyes and a plump little mouth …. He murmured a few words in formal French, then leaned forward and placed a hand on General Pulaski’s chest.
The general farted.
It was a long, loud, rumbling fart, and the night was filled with a stench so terrible that Brianna huffed out all the air in her lungs in a vain effort to escape it.
Someone laughed, out of sheer shock. It was a high-pitched giggle, and for a moment she thought she’d done it herself and clapped a hand to her mouth. The tent dissolved into embarrassed, half-stifled laughter punctuated by gasps and choking as the entire rotting essence of General Pulaski’s insides filled the atmosphere. Admiral d’Estaing turned hastily aside and threw up in the corner.
She had to breathe … She grunted, as though the smell had punched her, and her stomach puckered. It was like breathing rancid lard, a fatty foulness that slicked the inside of her nose and throat.
“Come on.” William grabbed her by one arm, John Cinnamon by the other, and they had her out of the tent in a ruthless instant, knocking General Lincoln out of their way.
It was raining hard outside by now and she gulped air and water, breathing as deep as she could.
“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God …”
“Was that worse, do you think, than the dead bear in the wood above Gareon?” John Cinnamon asked William, in a meditative voice.
“Lots,” William assured him. “Oh, Jesus, I’m going to be sick. No, wait …” He bent over, arms folded over his stomach, and gulped heavily for a moment, then straightened up. “No, it’s all right, I’m not. Are you?” he asked Brianna. She shook her head. Cold water was running down her face and her sleeves were pasted to her arms, but she didn’t care. She would have jumped through a hole in Arctic ice to cleanse herself of that. A slime of rotten onions seemed to cling to her palate. She cleared her throat hard and spat on the ground.
“My sketchbox,” she said, wiping her mouth and looking toward the tent. There had been a general hasty exodus, and men were scattering in every direction. Admiral d’Estaing and his officers were jostling down a footpath toward a large, lighted green tent that glowed like an uncut emerald in the distance. General Lincoln, his hat full of rain, was looking about helplessly as his adjutants and orderlies tried in vain to keep a torch lighted. General Pulaski’s resting place, by contrast, was deserted and pitch dark.
“He put the candles out,” said William, and sniggered very briefly. “Good thing the tent didn’t explode.”
“That would have been quite fun,” Cinnamon said, with obvious regret. “And fitting, too, for a hero. Still, your sister’s drawings … I’ll toss you to see who goes in to get them.” He fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a shilling.
“Tails,” said William at once. Cinnamon tossed, caught the coin on the back of his hand with a slap, and peered at it.
“I can’t see.” If there was a moon, it was covered with rainclouds, and the pouring night was dark as a wet black blanket.
“Here.” Brianna reached out and ran her fingertips over the wet, cold face of the coin. And it was a face, though she couldn’t tell whose. “Heads,” she said.
“Stercus,” William said briefly, and, unwinding his wet stock, rewound it around his lower face and plunged down the path toward the dark tent.
“Stercus?” Bree repeated, turning to John Cinnamon.
“It means ‘shit’ in Latin,” the big Indian explained. “You aren’t a Catholic, are you?”
“I am,” she said, surprised. “And I do know some Latin. But I’m pretty sure ‘stercus’ isn’t in the Mass.”
“Not one I’ve ever heard,” he assured her. “I thought you wouldn’t be Catholic, though. William isn’t.”
“No.” She hesitated, wondering just how much this man knew about William and the complications of their shared paternity. “You … er … have you been traveling with William for some time?”
“A couple of months. He didn’t tell me about you, though.”
“I suppose he wouldn’t have.” She paused, not sure whether to ask what—if anything—William had told him.
Before she could decide, William himself was back, gasping and gagging, the sketchbox under his arm. He thrust it at her, yanked the stock down off his face, turned aside, and threw up.